This story was reported by HANA ALBERTS, JULIA NEYMAN, LUIS PEREZ, GRAHAM RAYMAN, KATIE THOMAS, JOHN VALENTI and CHUCK BENNETT. It was written by Rayman.
Newsday (New York)
Copyright 2006 Newsday, Inc.
An explosion, probably fueled by a gas leak, leveled a venerable East Side brownstone, showering the upscale block with glass shards and filling the neighborhood with heavy, acrid smoke.
Investigators yesterday were looking into whether the doctor who owned the building, Nicholas Bartha, 66, turned on the gas and tried to kill himself and destroy the building as a final, bitter salvo in a long-running divorce battle. Paul Browne, a police department spokesman, said the incident was being investigated as a crime.
Hours before the blast, police sources said, Bartha e-mailed a 15-page, single-spaced letter to his ex-wife and 20 others, blaming her for hardships in his life, said a police official with knowledge of the situation.
“When you read this ... your life will change forever,” Bartha wrote in the message. “You deserve it. You will be transformed from gold digger to ash and rubbish digger. You always wanted me to sell the house. I always told you I will leave the house only if I am dead.”
“Ms. Bartha, at this time, cannot withstand the additional burden of the media microscope on this personal tragedy,” Cordula’s attorneys, Donna Bennick and Polly Passonneau, said in a statement yesterday.
The five-alarm blast just after 8:40 a.m. at 34 E. 62nd St. injured 15 people - one in critical condition and one in serious condition — and nine firefighters, who sustained non-life-threatening injuries.
One of the injured civilians, witnesses said, suffered multiple slashes from glass shards that became embedded in her arms, legs and torso. Karen Morris, a private nurse who works nearby, tried to help the woman.
“A window from the collapsed building blew out on her, and she had splinters of glass up her whole left side,” she said.
“She had blood coming down the side of her head and down her leg and her left shoe was missing,” said Joseph D’Orazio, a hair salon manager who works down the block.
Rescuers pried Bartha, who had burns to 70 percent of his body, from beneath 30 feet of flaming rubble after he made a cell-phone call to officials.
“I heard an explosion and the apartment rumbled,” said 12-year-old Artur Bastos, who was staying at a nearby hotel. “I looked out my window and saw smoke and fire.”
In a neighborhood teeming with well-heeled residents, shoppers, and high-end stores like Hermes and Domenico Vacca, the explosion brought everything to a halt. Police closed streets, while firefighters engaged in a three-hour battle with the blaze.
City buildings department inspectors, meanwhile, examined the ruins of the shattered brownstone and checked for damage in the surrounding buildings.
Officials said the fire damaged three apartments in a co-op building next door, which also sustained significant water damage. And at least four of the businesses located in buildings to the rear of the fire area were damaged, officials said. One of those, a new restaurant called Lollipop, was forced to cancel an opening night party set for last night.
Illyse Fink, a Department of Buildings spokeswoman, said the leveled structure was not the subject of complaints, recent construction activity or violations.The incident shook residents and workers in the area, many of whom said they immediately thought that terrorism might be at the root of the incident. But the White House quickly issued a statement saying it was not a terrorist attack.
“I figured it was the terrorists; they had finally come,” said Guillermo Cowley, 50, a photojournalist who lives nearby.
Diego Cardona, 48, a manager at a hair salon in the Hotel Regency, on Park Avenue, between E. 61st Street and E. 62nd Street,, was simply relieved. He had a 10 a.m. appointment with Dr. Paul Mantia, who also had offices in the building where the explosion occurred.
“Of course, it shakes you up and makes you feel scared,” Cardona said. “But that’s life. Here today, and tomorrow? Who knows.” Cardona said Mantia appeared at the salon shortly after the blast, looking for his secretary. She was found safe and officials said that only Bartha was in the building when the explosion occurred.
“If it had occurred later, there is no telling how many people would have been injured,” said Nicholas Scoppetta, New York City Fire commissioner, from the scene.
Bartha had been embroiled in a five-year divorce battle with his former wife, Cordula Hahn, of upper Manhattan, an employee with the Dutch consulate. Hahn, records show, initially filed for divorce in 2001. A related case appeared in court records this year.
A police official at the scene said that arson investigators believe that Bartha opened up a gas valve in his basement before the blast, and let the noxious fumes seep into the air without deliberately igniting them.
Law enforcement sources said investigators were baffled by Bartha’s e-mailed letter, which was also addressed to Gov. George Pataki, among others. One police officials who saw the message described it as a “rambling e-mail, with complaints about everyone from Teddy Roosevelt to (anti-war activist) Cindy Sheehan.”
Officials do not believe that terrorism was a motive.
Between 2001 and 2006, Hahn’s attorneys won a series of cash judgments worth more than $4 million against Bartha, and the doctor may have been trying to sell the brownstone to help pay the cost of the divorce settlement, court records show.
Neither Hahn nor her lawyers returned phone calls yesterday. Bartha’s lawyer did not return a phone call.
The structure housed a doctor’s office in the cellar and first floor, an apartment on the second floor and a duplex on the third and fourth floors. Several witnesses, including a doorman at a nearby building, said they smelled a powerful odor of gas before the explosion.
Joseph Petta, a Con Edison spokesman, said the utility received a complaint about a gas odor from a caller next door to Bartha’s building prior to the explosion.
Several people touched by the incident had strong words for Barha. “He shouldn’t be alive for what he did,” D’Orazio said.
Suggesting another way for Bartha to end his life, Ann Marie D’Alessandro, of Staten Island, whose niece was injured in the blast, said, “Take pills, take pills.”